Goode Glass FINAL (6-26-23) - Flipbook - Page 38
Ginny Ruffner
T
RAINED IN PAINTING and drawing, Georgia-born artist Ginny Ruffner (born
1952) first discovered glass in the form of flat glass and neon tubing before exploring
sculptural flameworking involving a torch. While apprenticing in a commercial
Atlanta studio to acquire the needed skills, she discovered more durable borosilicate
glass. Commonly used to produce laboratory apparatuses, its greater strength allowed her to
create larger work. She then sandblasted and painted the structures with oil paints, pencils, and
crayons. An entirely novel approach to glass, this treatment still allowed light to penetrate the
work. After relocating to Seattle in the mid-1980s, she established herself as a pioneering voice
in the male-dominated world of studio glass. Ruffner’s artistic practice has never been limited to
glass, however. Her diverse creative output has included writing, pop-up books, large-scale public
sculpture in metal, explorations of artificial intelligence, digital design, and app development.
This sculpture was made the year she was elected a Fellow of the American Craft Council, one
of many honors she has received.
The easel-like structure, a format she has repeatedly used in her work, is infused with playful,
visual citations of art-historical references. Ruffner delights in juxtaposing recognizable imagery
by “connecting the dots,” as she describes it, creating a tongue-in-cheek statement on the practice
of artists drawing on the work of others — not copying, but commenting. Here, she is citing a
variety of paintings by Pablo Picasso, including a portrait of his seated lover Dora Maar (1937),
his famed Rooster (1938), and a picnic scene titled Joie de Vivre (Joy of Life, 1946). Picasso, in turn,
had created his joyous outdoor setting with frolicking fauns as a comment on his friend Henri
Matisse’s Bonheur de Vivre (1905-1906). While pointing a finger at the practice, Ruffner places
herself into its chronology in a self-predicating jest. More importantly, however, her sculpture
underscores the life-affirming attitude of Picasso’s work, created among the devastations of WWII.
After a near-fatal car accident in 1991, Ruffner endured a near-impossible road to recovery that she
sustained through personal perseverance and an inherent insistence on the joys of life.
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